The cities of New York and Los Angeles. The Supreme Court of Montana. And most Americans. We all know that corporations are not people and do not deserve the political rights afforded to Americans.

My friends at United Republic are putting this question on the map. They are asking our 300,000 members to suggest Citizens United as a question to the candidates this weekend at the Presidential debates.

John Bonifaz, lawyer extraordinaire, has also put out the call for action. Here’s how you can get involved:

“Here below are suggested questions to submit:

1) On Friday, December 30, the Montana Supreme Court upheld a century-old state law banning corporate money in elections. The court ruled that the state had the right to prohibit corporate expenditures in the political process to protect democracy. Do you agree with the Montana Supreme Court?

2) In January 2010, the United States Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC stating that corporations are people and have the First Amendment right to spend their corporate general treasury funds in our elections. The ruling, which swept away a century of precedent, has led to an onslaught of hundreds of millions of corporate dollars into our political process. Do you support a constitutional amendment to overturn that ruling and to make clear that corporations are not people with constitutional rights?

3) Do you think corporations should be treated as people with the right to spend their corporate general treasury funds in our elections?

4) A narrow majority of the US Supreme Court ruled two years ago that corporations should be treated as people with that right, but just last week the Montana Supreme Court challenged that ruling and upheld a century-old state law banning corporate money in elections. Is the Montana Supreme Court right?

As we enter this presidential election year, we should know where every candidate stands on this central issue of our time. Ask the presidential candidates. Let’s get them on the record. Is it we the people or we the corporations?”

Ask the Presidential Candidates Whether They Support Corporate Spending in Our Elections January 6th, 2012Dylan Ratigan

It’s what every American should be asking themselves. The Tea Party too.

Do you stand with the modern-day British East India Corporations and their masters (the Kochs, the Olins, the Bradleys and other royals that want to unmake the American Century and rig American democracy like they rigged the financial markets)? Or do you stand with the people in your community? Who do you serve?

It’s pretty clear who Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP leadership in Wisconsin serves. They and their brethren and Forbes 400 patrons have declared open war on the middle class, with rafts of industry ghost-written legislation in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana — in about half the states. To strip the collective bargaining rights of political enemies, to defund public schools (and teachers), to suppress the vote by requiring photo IDs (Jim Crow, Jr.), to dissolve elected local governments in a corporate coup d’état, to arrogate sweeping executive authority over state agencies in a single unelected … tzar(?), to transfer tax dollars from the poor and middle class to give tax breaks to corporations, the works — all supported by the same press-shy billionaire ideologues behind Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council. As the fake “Koch” phone call demonstrated, they don’t care about your jobs or your economy, and they don’t care about you.

Faith – in the soundness of democracy in the midst of dictatorships.
Hope – renewed because we know so well the progress we have made.
Charity – in the true spirit of that grand old word. For charity literally translated from the original means love, the love that understands, that does not merely share the wealth of the giver, but in true sympathy and wisdom helps men to help themselves.

We seek not merely to make government a mechanical implement, but to give it the vibrant personal character that is the very embodiment of human charity.

We are poor indeed if this nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world. We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude.

In the place of the palace of privilege we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity.
It is a sobering thing, my friends, to be a servant of this great cause. We try in our daily work to remember that the cause belongs not to us, but to the people. The standard is not in the hands of you and me alone. It is carried by America. We seek daily to profit from experience, to learn to do better as our task proceeds.

Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales.

Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

In this world of ours in other lands, there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy.

Just as it was time to fight corporate power in 1936, again it is now.We must take the power back from the industrial dictatorship (plutocracy, oligarchy, corporate aristocracy, corporatocracy–whatever you want to call it). It has become everything that the creators of America despised about the Royalists (Of course, some of the leaders of the Revolution were wealthy and had wealthy people's interests in mind (see A People's History of the United States), but I'm damn sure that Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson would be furious with the corporate government that exists today). Bring back a dose of that irrepressible American spirit–that revolutionary spirit. The "rendezvous with destiny" awaits.History tends to repeat its self in this case.Its time to act now in 2012 and beyond.

A startling new report reveals the billions in government dollars that benefit America’s wealthiest citizens
Class warfare is a politically charged term these days, from the Wall Street protests to the Capitol Hill negotiations over curtailing the nation’s debt. But a new congressional analysis, obtained by Newsweek, may fuel populist outrage by showing the extent of government subsidies that go to the wealthiest people in America.

From unemployment payments to subsidies and tax breaks on luxury items like vacation homes and yachts, Americans earning more than $1 million collect more than $30 billion in government largesse each year, according to the report assembled by Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, who is so often at odds with members of both parties that colleagues call him “Dr. No.” The Internal Revenue Service provided the data showing how much money was going to the much-referenced top 1 percent.

In all, millionaires receive hefty help from Uncle Sam. The $30 billion in handouts, to put it in perspective, amounts to twice as much as the government spends on NASA, and three times the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. On the other hand, it would only cover the cost of fighting about three months in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, eliminating them would help make a small dent in the $1.5 trillion congressional leaders are trying to find by Thanksgiving.